ECRM: Retail circular advertising trends, August 2013

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ECRM compared retail circular advertising in August 2012 versus August 2013 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. A home improvement promotional arms race between Home Depot and Lowe’s appears to be taking place: Lowe’s saw year-over-year increases of 100%, 75% and 184.4% across circular page count, ad block per page count and ad block per circular count, respectively. Despite these large gains, Lowe’s still appears to be playing catch-up to Home Depot, which continued to run more ad blocks per page and per circular than Lowe’s. These two areas of focus were pushed by 57.1% and 50.8%, respectively, although Home Depot did cut total circular page count by 50% versus last year.

Outside of the home improvement channel, August was fairly stable. A few notable exceptions to this were Kmart’s, Kroger’s and Walmart’s large increases in circular page count; a large increase in ad blocks per circular for Toys-R-Us; and a moderate decrease in ad blocks per circular for Fred Meyer. Overall, page count was moderately up; ad count per page was slightly up, with very little change occurring; and ad count per circular was flat due to offsetting changes from the various retailers.

About ECRM’s Business Intelligence

ECRM’s Ad Comparisons technology captures promotional data from the top U.S. and Canadian retailers in all major markets. Ad Comparisons captures more than 40 metrics for each ad block and provides hundreds of analytic reports to put the advertising data in context. Ad Comparisons takes an individual approach to ensure all data and reports fit the needs of each user.